Sunday, June 7, 2015

Love

Love: a sense of thrilling and confusing for many centuries, a word which can easily be rude but also can make people give up themselves. We can't define it. It's not part of something conceptually we know. "Love does not have a definition," Ibn Arabi said, a Sufi and Spanish-born thinker of the 12th century in his treatise, Futuhat. "Those who define love means never know it, because love is a drink without missing thirsty."

Love: we just caught it as a process. It could never be photographed completely. A century later, Jalaluddin Rumi, the most famous Sufi revealed its sense, he called it Ishq. Love is the "sea of nothingness," the veil of secrecy will always veil it. Whatever you say or do to take off the veil, you're just going to add another veil over it. Presumably therefore, in thousands of lines of his Masnavi, Rumi just expressed it in a figurative, in allegory and in the form of negation, with a series of word "not". "Love is a tall tree, not on the ground, not above the treetops, even not in the crown of Heaven."

Maybe, Love will be clear only as the antithesis. In Rumi's contemplation, love often appears as a force which is contrary to reason. While the intelligence or reasoning is busy illuminate the space to reach the world, love has its own life and its activities: When reason is enforcing market and begin trading, love is saving jobs in hiding. "People who are in love," Rumi also said, "Find the secret places in the world that is full of violence. There they are "engaged in transactions with beauty". But such places are not recognized by "Reason".

"Nonsense!" the Reason said, "I've been looking around and measure the wall, and I do not find such a place."

Contradiction between Love and Reason -- or some kind of anti reasons -- is not only voiced by the Sufis of Islam in the age of Ibn Arabi and Rumi. In the 20th century, especially in Europe, since the raging crisis of belief in rationalism, some thinkers also emphasized conflict or incompatibility.

In the 1930s in France, Bergson's echoed the sense of élan vital, namely an encouragement of life that continuously flowing and growing, not a static presence. Science, compiled by the intellect / reason, will not be able to translate it. Reason is able to analyze, analyze means to unravel, but for that we have to look at a process that moves continuously as if it stagnates. A song which can arouse our feelings will be parsed by the intellectuals into a row of notes, and its high-low tone is calculated. But then, as if the song stops, and we are no longer listening to its melodious.

I think the elan vital in Rumi's term is called Ishq, and the more commonly is called Love.

Ishq is anti stagnation. It is an opponent of rigidity. Ishq dismisses the idea which becomes dogma or life translated in a matter of days. It rejects any sense that makes calculations to achieve one goal. It does not stick to the "effective instrumental reason" for conquering nature, making the world as an object, raising capital and controlling of others. Thus, Love can't live with the calculation of profit and loss, can't be used in political strategy also can't accept the doctrine that freezes thoughts and feelings -- a powerful doctrine to establish the power. Love dares to break away from it all. It wanders, searching constantly, trying to enter the mystery presented by God.

Presumably, it is not a coincidence if love -- which is always vibrating at the base of Sufis life -- becomes very strong as resistance when the power has been the life's goal of people who are supposed to be close to God.

In the 11th and 12th centuries, from Baghdad to Cairo, the qadi who became justices of religion often used their power to live comfortably. At that time, Sanai, the Sufi poet born in Afghanistan, wrote The Hadiqat al Haqiqa (The Walled Garden of Truth) and railed religious judge who "wrote a fatwa calling for bloodshed, driven by vicious intentions, ignorance and greed". He chided them as the scholars who while "taking bribes, outlining the rules". Against putridity had pushed Sanai to stay away from the power's temptation. He met a Sufi and since then he left his position in Ghaznavid Bahram-shah.

The more famous story is part of the autobiography of Al Ghazali, al-Munqidh min al-Dalal (His Deliverance from Error). In Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, Franklin D. Lewis outlined the dilemma experienced by major scholars in the 12th century: Al Ghazali enjoyed a prosperous position as a religious leader who became the main teacher at Al-Nizamiyya of Baghdad, but he also knew his integrity slowly damaged. For almost six months he was in doubt between "the worldly charm and encouragement to eternal life". Eventually he left the glitter of the big city, Baghdad, and then he went wandering.

Maybe he's not moved by love like Rumi. But he knows, God does not exist near the people who showing off their intelligence and wisdom. He knows God can't be reached by reason of profit or loss. The sufi chooses love and silent.
***

In this foto : he looks thinner and getting older. He made me cry because I was so amazed by what he did : wearing Jubbah = Thawb = Thobe. Alain Soral is not an anti-Islam. Now I can only silent, speechless. I shudder, I tremble for then I can't stand to hold something pours out of my heart, and something is looking its way to say what my heart feels : seemingly I love him.

CZ

"Thank you for your perception! I like your romantic side, even if I do not always comment and I'm glad that you're in my circle of friends."(Courtesies by: Wolfgang A. Gerhardt)

Wolfgang A.Gerhardt : May be you like this Sunday collage

Cisca Zarmansyah : Before today, there never was a person doing this to me. You create a simple matter to look special. This is a special thing for me.

Cisca Zarmansyah : Thank you. I love it. I love you, my friend. ♥

CieL- FreYa Ceastle : Hmm, he's so nice...

"I am me.
In all the world,
there is no one else exactly like me.
Everything that comes out of me
is authentically mine,
because I alone chose it --
I own everything about me:
my body,
my feelings,
my mouth,
my voice,
all my actions,
whether they be to others or myself.
I own my fantasies,
my dreams,
my hopes,
my fears.
I own my triumphs and successes,
all my failures and mistakes.
Because I own all of me,
I can become intimately acquainted with me.
By so doing,
I can love me
and be friendly with all my parts.
I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me,
and other aspects that I do not know
-- but as long as I am friendly
and loving to myself,
I can courageously and hopefully
look for solutions
to the puzzles and ways
to find out more about me.
However I look and sound,
whatever I say and do,
and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time
is authentically me.
If later some parts of how I looked,
sounded,
thought,
and felt
turn out to be unfitting,
I can discard that which is unfitting,
keep the rest,
and invent something new
for that which I discarded.
I can see,
hear,
feel,
think,
say, and do.
I have the tools to survive,
to be close to others,
to be productive,
and to make sense
and order out of the world of people
and things outside of me.
I own me,
and therefore,
I can engineer me.
I am me,
and I am okay."

VIRGINIA SATIR
(American Phychologist and Educator, 1916-1988)

About Me

"When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent. I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent. I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out. I was not a trade unionist. When they came for the Jews, I remained silent. I wasn't a Jew. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out." - Martin Niemöller